Book Club and a new pony

Well, sil­ly me I for­got to take my cam­era to the rid­ing les­son at the new barn today, so I shall have to wait to post a pic­ture of the dar­ling new pony, Rowan, until Thurs­day when Avery has her next les­son. Suf­fice to say it was suc­cess­ful! And read­ers, let me tell you of my sat­is­fac­tion upon mak­ing the jour­ney to the sta­ble: it was but a 5‑pound cab ride away from school! Ross Nye Sta­bles, in Bathurst Mews, with lessons across the Bayswa­ter Road in Hyde Park. Now, why did it take us so long to go there? Ah well, we’re there now. The mews itself is gor­geous, cob­ble­stoned as they all are, and sim­ply over­flow­ing with win­dow­box­es full of pan­sies and vio­lets, and trail­ing vines and ivy. I say this with spu­ri­ous author­i­ty since I can­not real­ly iden­ti­fy any flow­ers except marigolds, which my moth­er made me enter into every Flower Show at School 77 (for which I earned a pathet­ic Hon­or­able Men­tion every year, so sad). My point is, it’s a very flow­ery mews. So they put Avery on sweet Rowan, who is rather Scout-like in his size and demeanor, and since my loy­al­ties have always stayed with Scout, I felt good. She and two instruc­tors head­ed off toward the park and for some idi­ot­ic rea­son I fol­lowed them, only to be aban­doned for The Mile, the path around the entire park. So I spent the hour on a ruinous phone call to my moth­er-in-law (how do we man­age to talk for an hour? I can eas­i­ly do that with my moth­er, too).

Home to exchange via email din­ner plans with the Divine Sarah Webb, with whom we’re plan­ning our Paris trip. You sim­ply must go on Sarah’s web­site and see her art­work. Her show, “Fat and Blood and How To Make Them” was one of the high­lights of the life of my gallery in New York. Can I boast for a moment and say that Edward Albee bought one of her pieces? That was beyond thrilling.

But I digress. Did I tell you that the for­mi­da­ble Mrs Davies, head­mistress of King’s Col­lege Prepara­to­ry School, invit­ed me by let­ter over the sum­mer to teach a Book Club after school this year? Her let­ter was a mar­velous piece of Eng­lish lan­guage engi­neer­ing, beg­ging my kind for­give­ness should her invi­ta­tion strike me as a “cheeky” one. On the con­trary, I was thrilled. I have missed the Book Clubs of Avery’s lit­tle girl­hood, with a host of chil­dren sit­ting on the gray felt rug that zipped around the col­umn in our Tribeca loft, read­ing to the lit­tle sprouts and hav­ing snack. I think I did it for five years! So this was great. Except for the sti­fling unsea­son­able heat and the fact that the school seems aller­gic to hav­ing the win­dows open. It was a hor­ri­ble flash­back to the Fash­ion Show.

The Club was assigned to Mrs Miek­le’s sixth-form class­room, which dou­bles as the Eng­lish Room. The sixth-form girls were busi­ly pack­ing up their ruck­sacks, com­plain­ing about the amount of home­work giv­en that day, the incred­i­ble mean­ness of var­i­ous teach­ers, chang­ing into dance leo­tards, shar­ing water bot­tles. Their pip­ing Eng­lish voic­es and sort of awk­ward pre-ado­les­cent demeanor was sim­ply adorable. Then they depart­ed, to be replaced by Avery and Anna, and the New Girl Eliz­a­beth, who Avery had press-ganged into sign­ing up for Book Club. And then, four gulls that, in typ­i­cal nine-year-old fash­ion, did not iden­ti­fy them­selves and sim­ply plopped down on the floor. So I opened “Bet­sy-Tacy,” asked if any­one knew what an auto­bi­og­ra­phy was, got a resound­ing silence for my pains, then Avery said yes, it was a per­son telling the sto­ry of her own life, so I explained that this book was a fic­tion­al­ized auto­bi­og­ra­phy. It was the author writ­ing down the sto­ries of her child­hood but giv­ing all the char­ac­ters dif­fer­ent names. I read the first three chap­ters, and there was rapt atten­tion from the girls, who grad­u­al­ly sank down with their heads on their back­packs, star­ing at the cov­er illus­tra­tion and occa­sion­al­ly ask­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion as to which girl on the front was which char­ac­ter. I had wor­ried a bit because the sto­ry starts out about five-year-olds, but there was no prob­lem. They loved it. If any of you have lit­tle girls who do not know Bet­sy-Tacy, run, don’t walk to your near­est real or vir­tu­al book­store and snap it up.

Home sweat­ing to death, via Vil­landry where Avery wolfed down, I’m ashamed to say, both ice cream and a pain au choco­lat. I real­ly must bring a health­i­er snack to pickup!

Friends saun­tered in for din­ner, the tru­ly lus­cious chick­en cur­ry with oranges and apples, and a sal­ad of lam­b’s let­tuce (it is also called mache) with a vinai­grette of my own inven­tion. It is not for the faint of heart.

Gar­lic Lemon Vinaigrette

1 lemon
2 cloves garlic
sea salt
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp bal­sam­ic vinegar
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Here’s the fun part, if you’re at all OCD. You roll the lemon around on the counter, which for some rea­son makes it give more juice. Then with a sharp par­ing knife, peel it all round, leav­ing no pith (I just can’t stand that word. But it’s not as bad as “moist”.) Then very care­ful­ly sec­tion the lemon, tak­ing care to dis­card seeds. The sec­tions will look like tiny pale man­darin orange sec­tions as you get in a can.

Peel the gar­lic and chop it right with the lemon sec­tions which you have sprin­kled with salt. It will become a kind of liq­uidy paste final­ly. Scoop this with the flat of your knife into a nice small bowl. Grad­u­al­ly whisk in the olive oil and watch it emul­si­fy. Then whisk in the vine­gar and mus­tard. Dress the lam­b’s let­tuce just at the last moment before eat­ing, because the leaves are so del­i­cate and will absorb the dress­ing right away.

For dessert we had Eng­lish straw­ber­ries (red all the way through, such a delight after their Amer­i­can cousins that look like straw­ber­ries and bark like straw­ber­ries but smell like noth­ing but their plas­tic con­tain­ers and are white and hard inside. Ick.) sprin­kled with Amaret­to and tossed with a tiny bit of sug­ar. I want­ed to sprin­kle them with Coin­treau but I did­n’t have any and was too lazy to go back out. One of the things I love about my friend (and there are so many) is that she was quite fine with her chil­dren hav­ing a bit of Amaret­to with their fruit. Although Avery, no child of her spir­its-lov­ing par­ents, wrin­kled up her nose and said, “Eew, what’s wrong with the straw­ber­ries?” Ah, youth.

I’m so pleased to go to bed tonight with a suc­cess­ful Book Club under my belt, and a new pony and barn. Now all we need is for John to come home and start shop­ping seri­ous­ly for our Mini, and the autumn will be look­ing quite bright indeed.